A few days ago, a Mumbai daily gossiped about "a gorgeous actress" and her "much-married beau". With huge hints dropped about her working in the West and making waves there, they may as well have published her name. Similarly, they could have been more candid about the "much married beau" and said he was a Khan with three kids (more than one fits this description). The gossip item said that after both of them individually globe-trotted for a long spell, they're finally back in Mumbai and spending quality time together. But, said the story, they take great care not to be caught. They meet with discretion at a common friend's place and arrive in nondescript sedans that won't alert the media or the public.

There seems to be some sort of a pattern here. It's only after they've lost their respective fathers that many actresses seem to get involved with older men, married of course. It happened as far back as the 80s when Hema Malini "married" Dharmendra. Her mother, the formidable Jaya Chakravarthy did not approve of her daughter's romance with a man "who's nearly as old as me" (as she once told me). But Hema went ahead. She was no longer the straightforward young girl of the early 70s who was interested in bachelors like Sanjeev Kumar and Jeetendra. Around that time, her parents had even tried to fix a match with a well-known cricketer. When her heart began to beat for Dharmendra, her parents were aghast. But the act of marrying a married man took place only after her father was no longer around. Although he kept to the background and it was Jaya Chakravarthy who steered Hema's life and career, as long as her father was alive, Hema didn't get as brazen as she later did with Dharmendra.

It was the same with the attractive actress, Tina Munim. This Dev Anand discovery was like any other young girl when she was dating Nargis and Sunil Dutt's only son, Sanjay. Tina and Sanju were young and single, there was nothing scandalous about their seeing each other or breaking up with each other. And, at the end of day, they went back to their respective houses. Again, it was only after her father passed away that Tina got involved with Rajesh Khanna (alias Kaka), father of two and still married to Dimple. She didn't do anything like moving in with a man when her father was still around but moved in with Kaka after he passed away.

The only other time Rajesh himself was living-in openly was long before Dimple entered his life. In the 60s, "living in sin" was considered just that when an unknown Jatin Khanna (later Rajesh Khanna) and Gary Sobers' ex-fiancee, starlet Anju Mahendroo, began to live together. Anju's mother Shanti was divorced and was a single parent to her two daughters. It was considered scandalous enough for Stardust to begin publication with a cover story on "superstar" Rajesh Khanna's live-in relationship. Yes, that was their lead story in their very first issue and since magazines wrote only sanitised stories until then, the deliciously irreverent Stardust became an overnight hit.

I wonder if it's a coincidence that four decades later, the same syndrome prevails. Stories about Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan started and grew, sometime after her father, Dr Ashok Chopra, succumbed to cancer. Until then, she was linked with eligible young men her age like Shahid Kapoor (though there was a period when she was rumoured to be married man Akshay Kumar's favourite girl, but fires if any were quickly doused). However, after her father's death, persistent whispers about SRK and PC have been heard and they haven't stopped. Is the fascination for an older man therefore a daddy syndrome?

There's something else that remains unchanged but it's a different matter altogether.

Governments may come and governments may go but the kind of politics they play is the same. That holds true for Hindu-Muslim sentiments, irrespective of which century we live in.

Years ago, Sunil Dutt had described to me how he'd wed Nargis quietly (according to Hindu rites) in his Napean Sea Road apartment with communal feelings peaking outside over their inter-faith marriage. That was in 1958, 11 years after the Partition.

But remember Shah Rukh Khan's partner in the energetic 1, 2, 3, 4, get on the dance floor in Chennai Express? That was Vidya Balan's cousin, the sensuous Priyamani, who is a popular name in the South. A couple of months ago, when she announced her engagement to Mustufa Raj, a businessman she has been dating, the trolling forced her to throw her hands up and shout on Twitter that it was her life and to let her be.

We're in 2016. Has anything really changed since 1958?

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author